On your road to success in blogging, there is a lot of work that needs to be done. There are plenty of challenges that will be in your way along this road, and you may need to know how to overcome them for your best interest in blogging.

While you face those other challenges, there are some other internal problems you need to deal with as well. What’s that problem? Obsession.

Blogging is a thing you need to always keep up with and dedicate a good amount of time to. But, there’s a fine line between that and being obsessed with your blog and spending your whole day on it.

It’s often difficult to just spend a little while on your blog, because there’s so much to do. You probably want everything to be perfect on your blog. Your design, your community, and your posts to name a few. But there are a things even more specific than all of that that really makes you go nuts on your blog.

In this post, I’m going to highlight what those things are in more detail, and write if I think it’s worth obsessing over. Share your thoughts in the comments section like always!

Stressing over RSS Feeds

This is something that is very easily done, and can get going head over heels to make you feel good about. While having a high RSS reader count is something you should always shoot for, it’s not something you really want to obsess about. I know I used to do everything I could to get RSS subscribers. I was so positive that I would have 100 subscribers on this blog my the end of March, and we didn’t do it yet. But I’m not freaking out about that.

Final verdict

Always do your best to get your subscription count high, but don’t go overboard. That means, don’t put a reminder on every part of your blog to get RSS subscribers, and don’t get depressed when your feed count drops. [intlink id="2496" type="post"]Discouragement[/intlink] leads to a lot of bad things for your blog, so don’t let this take you over!

Jealousy Consuming You

It’s common in any obsession to have some jealousy towards someone or something. Usually in the case with blogging, you are jealous over somebody elses blog. Whether it be a better design, better community, better content quality – whatever the reason is it’s likely that you will work so much to be better. You would think that would being you more success to be “better” than a competitor, but often that feeling of wanting to be better may become something that you can’t control.

Final verdict

It’s perfectly normal to be jealous over someone’s blog, and it’s a great motivator. But, you have to be careful not to get too overworked when it comes to this, because jealousy is a crazy kind of emotion. Always work hard to improve your blog, but on your own terms. Don’t let the jealous factor take you over.

Achieving Long Term Goals

Long term goals is a challenge you set for yourself to achieve over a certain period of time. Some amount of time like weeks, months, or even years. They are the hardest to stick to, but when you finally accomplish that goal you are probably the happiest blogger in the blogosphere.

Sometimes when you set long term goals, you could forget about it and work less towards their completion. But you want that feeling of accomplishment, so as you start working towards that goal again you could start to overdo it and make that long term goal into a much shorter lived goal.

Final verdict

It can be great to finish a long term goal early, but there’s a reason why they are called “long term goals”. They’re the kind of goals where you put less work into overtime, but just enough where you can complete it. This is definitely something to never obsess about, no matter what the goal may be (including making money from your blog).

Spending all day on your blog

It’s easy to just sit down all day and do something you love (in this case, blogging). I find myself doing this a lot on my off days, and sometimes I neglect to take care of other tasks I was planning on doing that day. It happens to us all though, so don’t feel bad if you do it on occasion too.

If you’re a “pixel perfectionist” like me, you can probably sit there for a while and make every little thing exactly how you want it. That can be hours of work to a pixel perfectionist too. That just rings “obsession”!

Another scenario, you’re into blogging for money. You spend countless hours on your blog, only to earn minimal profit. Take for example, Tom from StandOutBlogger who just recently posted about this same situation. He put a lot of hours into his blog, and while he got some benefits like a great community and high RSS feed count, he didn’t make a lot of money doing it.

Final verdict

Limit your time on your blog. Spending an hour or two on your blog a day is perfectly fine in my opinion, so long as you aren’t putting off other tasks in your life. When it comes to making money, no you will not do it over night and it will take some time to do. But don’t put your whole day into your blog trying to make money.

Obsession in a long shot

My general feeling of obsession is that it never leads to good results. You always need to find a way to balance your time you put into anything, because you may be missing out on some important things in life. If you do choose to become obsessed with something, just know that you will miss out on other important things around you.

The only positive I found about being obsessed about your blog is that you will be doing something you really love to do. With that being said, you can be happy doing that thing over and over again all day.

What Are Your Thoughts?

How do you deal with over stressing things on your blog? Do you let some of the things mentioned in this post get to you, or do you just play it cool? I would love to hear your opinions in the comments!

Photo by Jim Sneddon

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